This piece is part of our Wit­ness­ing series, which shares pieces from Israeli authors and authors in Israel, as well as the expe­ri­ences of Jew­ish writ­ers around the globe in the after­math of Octo­ber 7th.

It is crit­i­cal to under­stand his­to­ry not just through the books that will be writ­ten lat­er, but also through the first-hand tes­ti­monies and real-time account­ing of events as they occur. At Jew­ish Book Coun­cil, we under­stand the val­ue of these writ­ten tes­ti­mo­ni­als and of shar­ing these indi­vid­ual expe­ri­ences. It’s more impor­tant now than ever to give space to these voic­es and narratives.

On Octo­ber 7th, Hamas ter­ror­ists com­mit­ted an inde­scrib­able mas­sacre that claimed the lives of 1,200 civil­ians and led to the abduc­tion of 253 Israelis and for­eign­ers. The loss of life, destruc­tion of infra­struc­ture and land, and sub­se­quent evac­u­a­tion of whole com­mu­ni­ties dev­as­tat­ed the Israeli farm­ing com­mu­ni­ties of the west­ern Negev. The attack direct­ly affect­ed forty-five com­mu­ni­ties, includ­ing twen­ty kib­butz­im and ten moshav­im. Entire farm­ing com­mu­ni­ties have been uproot­ed from their land and inter­nal­ly dis­placed, and must now nav­i­gate unimag­in­able destruc­tion and psy­choso­cial trauma. 

Two of these men, farm­ers Zamir Hai­mi from Kib­butz Nir Yitzhak and Moran Freibach from Kib­butz Nahal Oz, have brave­ly shared their sto­ries of Octo­ber 7th, when their homes and fam­i­lies were attacked and many loved ones were mur­dered. In col­lab­o­ra­tion with ReGrow Israel, which address­es the urgent needs of farm­ers using key inno­va­tions to ensure the west­ern Negev grows back stronger, I have lis­tened to and record­ed Zamir and Moran’s expe­ri­ences. What struck me most was their resilience and calm. Inter­viewed out­side in green sur­round­ings, the loud­est sound that of singing birds, they are sto­ic about the hor­rors they endured. And while they describe dev­as­ta­tion, they also share deter­mi­na­tion and hope. Moran returned to his kib­butz to repair the dam­age on Octo­ber 8th; Zamir repeat­ed­ly men­tions his wish to return and recov­er what has been lost. Defi­ance char­ac­ter­izes these pieces and the spir­it of Israelis at large; no mat­ter what, they will not give up.

Zamir and Moran are the embod­i­ment of the Zion­ist ide­ol­o­gy. In keep­ing with David Ben Gurion’s vision, these men are a tes­ta­ment to Israel’s resilience and deter­mi­na­tion, and its abil­i­ty to over­come chal­lenges in order to thrive, even in the face of ter­ror. These tes­ti­monies urge us not to look away. They prove that in the wake of dis­as­ter, there can be growth and, more impor­tant­ly, hope.

—Nicole Haz­an

“Roots” 

Zamir Hai­mi

I’m here. My first mem­o­ries are of the fields, the grass scratch­ing my legs, drag­ging up car­rots coat­ed in mud as the sun burns the back of my neck. Fight­ing with my sib­lings, my par­ents nev­er ask­ing where we were going or what time we would be back. I was always out­side. Dur­ing my army ser­vice, I couldn’t wait to be released so I could get back to work­ing the fields myself. My great­est achieve­ment as a father is that my four chil­dren chose to remain there, too.

My par­ents were among the first to estab­lish Kib­butz Nir Yitzhak in 1949, Holo­caust sur­vivors seek­ing a home where they could final­ly feel safe. Back when every­thing was desert, most of the res­i­dents, my father includ­ed, cul­ti­vat­ed the land. Near­ly eighty years lat­er, I con­tin­ued their lega­cy, help­ing to grow wheat, peanuts, pota­toes, and feath­ery bunch­es of car­rots. In the green­hous­es, toma­toes swelled and pep­pers flashed hard sheens of col­or. We made it beau­ti­ful. Coax­ing life out of the earth is what I know and love to do. 

I was with my fam­i­ly when we were attacked. Being wok­en up to Red Alerts— instruc­tions to get to our safe rooms because of rock­ets falling — wasn’t pleas­ant, but as res­i­dents of a com­mu­ni­ty so close to the Gaza bor­der, it’s some­thing we were used to. But so many rock­ets were fired, and at such fre­quen­cy, that it became wor­ry­ing and soon after, we under­stood that there were ter­ror­ists in our kib­butz. My wife is part of our kib­butz emer­gency man­age­ment team, and she began receiv­ing mes­sages from our friends and neigh­bors, call­ing for help. Two fam­i­lies had been abduct­ed, tak­en to Gaza by Hamas ter­ror­ists; hous­es were being loot­ed, shot at and set on fire to try and draw out residents. 

My nephew, Tal, aged forty-one mar­ried and a father of three, was one of the first mur­dered as he leapt to defend the kib­butz, his body tak­en back to Gaza, where it is still held. Grenades were lobbed towards the safe rooms; we had no food, water, air con­di­tion­ing, san­i­ta­tion. I want­ed to help, but it wasn’t safe to leave our shel­ter. Gun­shots fired, over and over. My wife’s phone pinged for four­teen hours until the army res­cued us.

The kib­butz was evac­u­at­ed and for months, none of us were allowed back. I saw my home on the news, the cars hol­lowed out, the paint burned away to the colour of sand. As for the fields, noth­ing was left. The army didn’t let me access the land and after months of neglect, any­thing grow­ing would be long dead. Cam­eras from the fields showed plants and veg­e­ta­tion set on fire. The green­hous­es were destroyed, the crops burned black.

I returned to Nir Yitzhak with my fam­i­ly in August 2024, near­ly a year after the attacks, but my com­mu­ni­ty — togeth­er since 1949 — has been split in two. Half of the res­i­dents are still liv­ing an hour away in Kib­butz Mash’abe Sade, and those who have returned home live with the war in Gaza on our doorstep. Res­i­dents with young chil­dren, or whose loved ones have been mur­dered face dif­fi­cult deci­sions about where to live; my nephew, Tal’s fam­i­ly, have not come back. 

As for the land, the recov­ery is long and slow. The West­ern Negev is based on what grows out of it — we sus­tain and finance our­selves from its pro­duce — and when the land was destroyed, we took a hit. We recruit­ed work­ers, since many were evac­u­at­ed, injured or mur­dered, and built a new team to put the agri­cul­ture back on its feet. We plant­ed more veg­eta­bles, allow­ing us to be self-suf­fi­cient; we grow qual­i­ty pro­duce and if we stop import­ing from oth­er coun­tries, our farm­ers will be able to ben­e­fit finan­cial­ly, as we should.

We are already see­ing results. Col­or replac­ing grey ash, life instead of emp­ty fields. Like our own heal­ing, this recov­ery takes time. Like my par­ents and the oth­er founders of our kib­butz, we will plant a bet­ter future.

After all, that’s why I’m here. 

“Five Years Ahead”

Moran Freibach

When I was young, I was taught to always think five years ahead. Where would I be five years after I left school? Uni­ver­si­ty? With my first child? What about the third? This kind of think­ing has become habit­u­al for me, even though until recent­ly, some might say my life was pre­dictable. I was born on the Israeli kib­butz Nahal Oz, 800 meters from the Gaza bor­der, and until Octo­ber 7, I’d lived there all my life. I met my wife aged twelve and we’ve been togeth­er ever since; we have five chil­dren and my friends are the same ones I’ve grown up with. If you’d asked me five years ago where I’d be today, I’d have guessed it would be pret­ty much the same. I couldn’t have pre­dict­ed that my home would be the tar­get of attacks, that I’d be repair­ing its destroyed agri­cul­ture, that my entire fam­i­ly would be recov­er­ing from the eleven hours we hid from Hamas ter­ror­ists, crammed into our safe room like ani­mals in a cage.

Peo­ple ask how we coped when a rock­et woke us up by land­ing direct­ly out­side our home, shat­ter­ing all of our win­dows, but some­how miss­ing us, allow­ing myself, my wife and sons to escape to our shel­ter. What it was like when Hamas raid­ed our kib­butz, burn­ing our cars and homes, kid­nap­ping, tor­tur­ing, shoot­ing, and mur­der­ing my neigh­bors, but inex­plic­a­bly bypass­ing our home. How it felt to learn that sev­en­teen-year-old Tomer had been used as bait to draw out oth­ers in hid­ing, before being shot dead, or that my clos­est child­hood friend, Tsahi Idan, had been tak­en back to Gaza, after ter­ror­ists shot and killed his 18-year-old daugh­ter, Ma’ayan, when she fought to close their safe­r­oom door. Tsahi is still in Gaza, 441 days later.

How did we cope? I answer that I felt frus­trat­ed, aban­doned, and use­less that I couldn’t help, or be helped. That Hamas cut the pow­er so there were fre­quent black­outs, that we had no bath­room in our safe room, and, increas­ing­ly des­per­ate, all we could do was wait in the dark. What I don’t always say is what got me through was imag­in­ing five years ahead. I refused to believe that my life was over, even as I lis­tened to machine guns out­side, heard the urgent shout­ing, watched my chil­dren grip each oth­er, ter­ri­fied. And when, some­how, beyond all hope and luck, we were final­ly res­cued, we began rebuild­ing our com­mu­ni­ty that same night.

Sev­er­al years ago, when COVID-19 was at its peak, and the dis­ease was leav­ing tur­moil and death through­out the world, I sat in quar­an­tine, doing noth­ing. That iner­tia and help­less­ness led me to a rev­e­la­tion: I loved my home, my kib­butz and my coun­try, and the best way I knew to con­tribute to it was through agri­cul­ture. Nahal Oz sus­tains itself and a large part of the coun­try through its agri­cul­tur­al pro­duce and it felt mean­ing­ful to me to become part of it. I wasn’t work­ing in agri­cul­ture at the time, so I quit my job, and now I man­age the agri­cul­ture for the entire kib­butz. It felt like a mis­sion, back then, to suc­ceed. I decid­ed to go for it, even though the sit­u­a­tion was bleak. And through hard work and time, we rose out of it.

On Octo­ber 8, I was back on Nahal Oz. It’s part of heal­ing, I believe, return­ing to the place of ter­ror, hurt, and trau­ma, but some are incred­u­lous of my choice to do so, espe­cial­ly the day after scores of ter­ror­ists attempt­ed to destroy our kib­butz, and close by, many were still car­ry­ing out attacks. The kib­butz was full of sol­diers, but no res­i­dents, and rock­ets were being fired con­stant­ly from the Gaza strip. All around me, I saw the results of what had hap­pened. The reser­voir was wrecked, the irri­ga­tion sys­tem shot to pieces, and see­ing it, I realised ter­ror­ists hadn’t come only to vio­late our homes, but also our fields. On the day of the attacks, they had tak­en the time to tar­get our water sys­tems, know­ing we couldn’t car­ry out agri­cul­ture with­out it. If they sev­ered the con­nec­tion between the peo­ple and our land, we would have no way to exist.

But I didn’t despair. I under­stood that we were lucky. The land may have been delib­er­ate­ly and sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly oblit­er­at­ed but I was still stand­ing, and I had the abil­i­ty to help recov­er what had been lost. 

Army tanks pro­tect­ed me as I sewed wheat into the fields, and they do so today as the land turns green. Because Hamas tried to destroy us, our answer is to live. We will return and flour­ish. This will be our lives five years ahead.

The views and opin­ions expressed above are those of the author, based on their obser­va­tions and experiences.

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